PS3 Can't Play Some Old Games

Very rarely does a new game console ship without some type of glitch. Microsoft's Xbox 360 launch last year was marred by systems that overheated, scratched game discs or froze. Microsoft only shipped 400,000 hardware units for the year because of these complications. Sony's PlayStation 3, which launched first in Japan Nov. 11 with 100,000 hardware units sold, already has one problem that's surfaced.

Although the majority of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games (and there are roughly 15,000 of them out there) will play on a PS3, approximately 200 games will not play correctly on the next-generation system. Games that will not play on PS3 include: Final Fantasy XI, Silent Hill 2, Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams and Tekken 5. Problems vary from sound glitches to screens that won't show the game.

Sony will correct this problem through a free software download, since all PS3s have access to PlayStation Network, the broadband community that Sony launched Nov. 17 along with the PS3 hardware.

Microsoft still hasn't worked out the kinks in its Xbox 360 backwards compatibility. Its next-generation console only plays about 267 Xbox games, which is roughly one-third of the games released on the original console.

Sony's PS2 launch, which also had hardware shortages, was marred by glitches that included PlayStation games that would not play on the new console.

Sony was expected to ship 400,000 PS3s for launch. The company is still forecasting 1 million PS3s for the United States by the end of the year and 6 million global shipments by the end of March 2007.

Numbers could be impacted by any type of glitches that can't be fixed with a free software download. Microsoft's Xbox 360 problems required swapping out bad systems with new ones, which held down units for stores.